1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tunable filter having a variable capacitor of which capacitance is variably controlled by a thin-film piezoelectric actuator and an inductor element.
2. Related Art
In the radio communication field, there is a strong demand for realizing a tunable filter that can continuously and freely change a pass band and a block band. Characteristics required for the tunable filter are, for example, a large band-change width, a continuous band change, small insertion loss and precipitous shielding characteristic as a filter (i.e., high Q), compactness and lightness, and high reliability and excellent reproducibility. However, filters having only remarkably limited performance can be achieved at present.
A filter is a circuit basically having a combination of an inductor element and a capacitor. A tunable filter can be realized when either inductance of the inductor element or capacitance of the capacitor can be changed.
Inductance of an inductor element is determined by a length and shape of a transmission path, and permeability in space. A variable inductor which changes permeability by placing and taking out a ferromagnetic core in the center of the coil using an inductor element having low Q is in practical use. However, an attempt to obtain large variable inductance is not known, using an inductor element of high Q used in a high-frequency band of a few hundred MHz or above for portable telephones or the like.
On the other hand, capacitance of a capacitor is determined by area and an interval of a pair of opposite electrodes, and permeability in space. A ferroelectric substance such as barium titanate and lead zirconate titanate has a characteristic that its permittivity changes by a few times at a maximum, when a direct current bias is applied to this ferroelectric substance. Therefore, a variable capacitor can be formed using these ferroelectric substances. However, a ferroelectric substance generally has large dielectric loss and has low Q.
A variable capacitor can be configured when a distance between electrodes is variable, and therefore, an electromagnetic driving mechanism such as a motor can be utilized. However, this has a slow response and has a large size. Therefore, the electromagnetic driving mechanism is not suitable for a mobile radio terminal such as a cellular phone.
A variable capacitor using an electrostatic driving type MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System) recently calls attention. For example, an experiment example of a tunable filter that has a troidal coil and many electrostatic driving type variable capacitors connected together is introduced (see 2003 IEEE Microwave Theory and Technique Symposium Digest p. 1781).
However, the electrostatic driving type variable capacitor has a phenomenon called pull-in in operation. While capacitance changes in the order of about two digits in on-off operations, capacitance disadvantageously changes continuously within a range of 1.5 times. Therefore, when the electrostatic driving type variable capacitor is applied to the tunable filter, it is difficult to realize the most demanded characteristic of continuously changing a band on a large scale, although a band can be digitally switched on a large scale.